Four months into the signature drive, MCCC has collected half the signatures that are needed. And since the signature drive must be completed by mid-November — which is just two months away — your help is needed now.

Michigan law requires MCCC to collect 304,101 valid signatures in order to place the medical marijuana initiative on the November 2008 ballot. Because the validity rate for the signatures that are being collected is hovering around 60%, this means we actually need to collect about 500,000 raw signatures to qualify the initiative for the ballot. So far, we have about 250,000 raw signatures in-hand, so we’re halfway there.

It’s going to cost about $500,000 to obtain the remaining 250,000 raw signatures that are needed — or about $2 apiece. This means we need to spend more than $8,000 per day — every day, including Saturdays and Sundays — between now and the middle of November to qualify the initiative for the statewide ballot.

Would you please visit www.StopArrestingPatients.org to donate $10 or more today? If everyone on this e-mail list were to donate just $10, we’d have literally twice as much money ($1,000,000) as will be needed to complete the signature drive.

Making Michigan the 13th state to protect medical marijuana patients from arrest is crucial to our national strategy: Michigan is the country's eighth largest state and would be the first medical marijuana state in the Midwest.

Would you please lend your support today?

I’ll be grateful for anything you can do to help.

Sincerely,

Rob KampiaExecutive DirectorMarijuana Policy ProjectWashington, D.C.

P.S. As I've mentioned in previous alerts, a major philanthropist has committed to match the first $3.0 million that MPP can raise from the rest of the planet in 2007. This means that your donation today will be doubled.